Benchmarking Methodology:
The methodology of the DataBeat’s Programmatic Trends Report for February 2024 lies in the analysis of anonymized data, sourced from some of the industry partners within the databeat network.
In this report, we compared Feb 2024 performance to Jan 2024 and Feb 2023 performance for programmatic advertising demand in the United States. As everyone in the industry is aware, CPMs in general tend to pick up going into February compared to January.
Key Highlights:
Month over month, the overall CPM increased by 15%, where Display increased by 13% followed by video with a 12% increase, and Programmatic fill rates increased by nearly 4.5%. This trend is in line with expectations as we normally observe better KPIs going into Feb.
When coming to Year over year, the overall CPM increased by nearly 8% however Display CPMs remained constant and video CPMs decreased by 8%. Programmatic fill rates increased by 5.5%.
Device Trends:
- Mobile devices continue to dominate the industry with a substantial 60% share of volume, and their CPMs are consistent over the months with an increase in CPMs by 16% MoM & 3% YoY respectively
- While Desktop CPMs increased by 12% MoM which is slightly lower than Mobile however their CPMs increased by nearly 7% which is better than mobile devices. Interestingly, the CPM gap between desktop and mobile is minimal, suggesting that advertisers are allocating similar budgets for both desktop and mobile ad formats.
- Though tablets hold a smaller share of volume, their CPMs increased by nearly 20% MoM which is higher than other devices.
Programmatic Integrations Trends:
In the programmatic landscape, Google being the market leader holds a 38% share of volume while client-side prebid integration stands out as the most widely recognized and utilized method among web publishers and has a 36% share of volume.
- Google saw a 12% increase in CPMs MoM however their CPMs dropped by 8% YoY, however, being the market leader it is still able to compete with all integrations easily which is evident from its market share.
- Interestingly, Prebid CPMs increased in both MoM & YoY by 10% & 4% respectively which is not in line with other integrations when comparing YoY data.
- TAM experienced only a slight increase in MoM CPMs compared to other integrations with only a 3% increase and moreover, it also experienced the highest drop in CPMs YoY with a 12% drop however it is still favored by the majority of the publishers because of its higher CPMs.
- While EBDA may be a smaller player in the industry, it has been significantly influenced by Google trends, The shifts in Google’s demands play a pivotal role in shaping the EBDA performance.
Prebid Top SSPs Highlights:
- Magnite has the highest volume share of client-side prebid integration, which could be attributed to the fact that they also offer prebid wrapper solutions to their publishers.
- Even though Triplelift falls slightly behind Magnite in terms of Volume share its CPMs are very strong at $2.44 highest among all the SSPs and it’s CPMs increased by almost 22% MoM which is also higher than most of the SSPs.
- Criteo stands out in Prebid with a very high increase in CPMs in MoM by 75%.
TAM Top SSPs Highlights:
- Since TAM is owned by Amazon, a large chunk of inventory is taken by Amazon accounting for 35% of the share of volume, even though their CPMs are lower than most of the other SSPs in TAM. Their CPMs dropped MoM as well which is in contrast to other SSPs.
- TripleLift is the only SSP that is consistently performing well in both Prebid and TAM with a pretty strong volume share and CPMs.
- Media.net stands out in TAM with a very high increase in CPMs both MoM and YoY at 52% & % 42% respectively.
